AS ANTI-MILITARY PROTESTS in Egypt enter their third day, at least 13 people have been confirmed to have died in the violence.
Protesters remain camped in Cairo’s Tahrir Square today, despite attempts over the weekend by police to remove them. Security forces fired tear gas throughout Sunday in an attempt to move protesters from the square and also attacked a makeshift hospital, according to Reuters. Demonstrators responded by hurling stones and petrol bombs.
Some protesters have accused police of using live fire, according to the BBC. The military have denied the claims.
The unrest comes just one week ahead of voting in parliamentary elections are due to take place – the first free elections in decades due to the long, autocratic rule of recently-ousted president Hosni Mubarak. Tahrir Square became the epicentre of the 18-day popular protest that led to Mubarak’s fall last February.
Unrest has also broken out in the cities of Alexandria, Suez and Aswan.
Protesters are fearful that the country’s military, which stepped into de facto control in the power vacuum that followed Mubarak’s fall, is attempting to keep an element of permanent control due to its plans to introduce a constitutionally-protected political role for itself.
The protesters are calling on Egypt’s military rulers to specify a deadline for fully handing over its power to a new and democratically-elected government. A date as late as 2013 has been suggested for the country’s presidential elections, however demonstrators are demanding a quicker transfer to civilian rule.
Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, former defence minister under Mubarak, has been targeted by protesters: “The people want the toppling of the Field Marshal,” has been repeatedly chanted over the past few days.
According to medical sources, two people were killed on Saturday and 11 lost their lives on Sunday. Up to 900 people, most of the them civilians, have been injured in violence.
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